How cricket is saving young Americans from gang life

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The journey for the boys from the hood in LA to the citadels of cricket in Australia is little short of miraculous

Americans have as much understanding of cricket as Inuits have of beachwear.
Those who have heard of the game joke that it’s baseball on Valium. So when
a team of former gangsters from Los Angeles, began hitting runs in a parking
lot 13 years ago, using trash cans as wickets, no one could have predicted
the side would endure, let alone make world tours.

But next month 12 of the world’s most unlikeliest cricket players from
Compton, in Los Angeles County, will strut their way to Australia for a
series of games in Melbourne and Sydney. With their du-rag hair